


Trapped

by rmany



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Dark Rey (Star Wars), F/M, Fix-It, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, That's Not How The Force Works
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:21:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23935252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rmany/pseuds/rmany
Summary: In the aftermath of the Rise of Skywalker, Rey takes refuge on Tatooine and searches for Ben. When Something goes terribly wrong it's up to Finn, with some help from a few friends to fix everything.Apparently I couldn't leave this as a dark one-shot, it's now a five chapter fix-it.(Warnings in Notes)
Relationships: Finn & Rey (Star Wars), Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 3
Kudos: 18





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> TW: brief mentions of suicidal thoughts, depression, loneliness, ambiguous character death
> 
> Please let me know if there any warnings you think I have missed.

**Hello!**  
**This is my first fic and is kind of experimental. I'm not sure if it worked and it definitely gets better in the second half! I haven't read any Star Wars fic since I watched TROS so I don't know if this has been done before (although I'm sure it has!) This is a lot darker than I ever thought I would write and I haven't done any research about what exactly a moisture farm is but I hope you enjoy it anyway!**  


**Trapped**

Rey arrived back to find a resistance base in celebration. No one here knew Ben Solo and they all hated Kylo Ren so it didn’t seem appropriate to be sad when they were all so joyful. Hugging Finn was the only time Rey allowed a tear to slip out. Then she let go and smiled. The twin lightsabres on her belt felt too heavy.

While everyone partied and dealt with the now leaderless First Order – “What the hell happened to Kylo Ren?” Finn asked, once. “Who cares?” Poe cheerfully replied, “He’s gone.” _Leia would have cared_ , Rey thought. _I care._ – Rey began to build a new sabre. She spent a week in a trance, guided very vaguely by Luke. Looking at the beautiful yellow sabre gave her a joy she had rarely ever felt. Ben would have liked it.

She took the twin lightsabres to Tatooine. She didn’t need them anymore, didn’t want them. Alderaan was gone and all Rey really knew about Anakin and Luke Skywalker was that they had both grown up on Tatooine. She tried to ask Luke, but when he appeared he refused to talk about anything unrelated to the force. Leia only visited once.

“Where’s Ben?” Rey asked, but Leia left before she could give Rey an answer.

The Lars homestead was surprisingly easy to find although the desert had begun to take it over long ago. It reminded Rey of Jakku. She let herself be childish again, sliding down the dune, exploring the sand filled buildings. It wasn’t much but it was better than an over-turned AT-AT. Poe had said they didn’t really need a Jedi at the moment, to take her time, so Rey decided to stay for a bit.

She buried the lightsabres in the sand wrapped in a cloth and immediately felt better. Freer. When an old woman approached to make conversation and asked _that_ question, Rey felt a force presence somewhere to her left. When she saw it was only Luke and Leia, the answer she excitedly began to give changed. Luckily the first letter was the same, “Rey Skywalker.”

Neither of the force ghosts stuck around but Rey was used to being alone. She quickly got to work. Turns out the force was useful for more than just fighting and the homestead was habitable again barely an hour after the sun had set.

Rey had been there a week when she got a call. It was Poe. “Hey Rey! Any chance you could bring BB-8 back?”

Poe greeted BB-8 joyfully when they arrived. Finn hugged Rey, “Did you do all your… force stuff?”

Rey thought about the countless hours she had spent in his ancestors’ home, calling out through the force and begging Ben to appear to her, even for a second. “Not all of it.”

Rey didn’t go back to Tatooine for nearly a year. Instead, she threw herself into life on the resistance base – or the Galaxian Republic headquarters as it was now known (Rey hated the name, but it had been democratically chosen from several other equally awful choices) – she fixed ships, made supply runs, moved rocks with the force, and generally avoided everyone. They all wanted to greet the conquering Jedi hero. Rey didn’t feel like a conqueror. Or a hero. She barely felt like a Jedi. What she did feel was alone. Ben still hadn’t appeared. Leia had come, once, and left a message to pass onto Poe about how proud she was of their efforts. But even Leia hadn’t had an answer for Rey about Ben’s whereabouts.

“I can’t even feel him, Leia! I never noticed… he was always… and now there’s just nothing.”

Leia had looked sad. “I’m sorry, Rey, I don’t know.”

When Rey had done nothing more useful for the Galaxian Republic than fix dodgy ships for three months, she told Finn she was heading back to Tatooine indefinitely. “Force stuff, you know.”

Finn hugged Rey, then she hopped in the Falcon and left. The homestead needed some clearing out again but nothing that Rey couldn’t handle. Rey settled in properly this time. She unpacked her meagre possessions from the Falcon and brought them inside. There was an old chest in one of the bedrooms and Rey felt a force remnant echoing from it. She decided to store her lightsabre there. Igniting it, she stared into the beautiful yellow depths of it for the first time in almost a year. Briefly, she thought about how much easier it would be to find Ben if- Jakku had taught her to quickly shut down such thoughts. She flicked the sabre off and hid it away in the chest.

Rey restored the moisture farm. It kept her busy during the day. At night when she couldn’t sleep, she meditated on the hole inside of her that Ben Solo had once so unknowingly filled. She dove in, like she had into the darkness on Ach-To. It felt the same, dark but welcoming. As though there were answers there if Rey could just reach deep enough. She always ended up facing that wall of ice. Mostly she saw herself there, sometimes Palpatine all wrinkled and grinning, occasionally a young man with tousled blonde hair and a scar like Ben’s. Never Ben though.

Rey was roused from her meditation one morning by a loud crash. She left to find her newly restored moisture farm in pieces and leaking her hard-earned water into the dry sand. In the middle sat a dazed young boy in a dented speeder. He looked up at her, startled, “I’m so sorry, Miss Skywalker, I lost control! I didn’t mean-”

Rey wasn’t listening. She reached out through the force and grabbed the boy by his neck, yanking him out of the speeder. He began scrabbling at his neck and wriggling, “Please! Please! I didn’t mean it, I promise! Please!” In the process of tightening her hold on his neck, Rey’s mind caught up with her actions. She dropped him suddenly and doubled over, nauseous at what she had been about to do.

The terrified boy didn’t hesitate. He jumped in his speeder, brought it sputtering to life and fled.

Rey collapsed to the ground. “Ben! Ben, please! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean… Ben!”

She had gotten used to Luke’s presence in the force by now so she wasn’t too disappointed when she looked up to find him there, staring at her sorrowfully. “Oh Rey.”

“I didn’t mean to. Luke, I don’t know what to do.”

Luke shook his head at her, “I warned you about the dark side before. And yet, still, you head straight for it.”

Rey sobbed, “Ben…”

“You know,” Luke said contemplatively, ignoring Rey’s fearful sobs, “I think we were wrong. You were not Ben’s light, he was yours. It took Ben twenty years to finally succumb, it took you barely twenty seconds.”

Rey could barely hear Luke over her own hysterics, but his words penetrated all the same.

“Then where is he?!” she screamed, “Why did he leave me?! Palpatine spoke of a bond that transcended time and space and life and death so why is Ben gone?! Why did he leave me? Why?!”

“Rey-”

“No! He left me! You’re here, so where is he? Ben! Ben, please! Please Ben, I need you!”

Rey lay curled up in the sand amidst the ruins of her moisture farm, begging Ben to come back. Luke left and Rey was glad. Night had fallen by the time Rey picked herself up. Tear tracks had left sandy trails on her cheeks and her whole body ached from the violence of her sobs. Back in the little house, Rey found a missed call from Finn. He had left a message so she flicked it on as she half-heartedly ate a quarter-portion.

“Hi Rey! Just thought I’d call to see how you are. I felt… something. Not sure what, but I just needed to check on you.”

He grinned, “Anyway, if I felt it then you definitely did. I miss you. So, er, bye. Call me.”

Rey lazily set the holo on repeat. It was nice to hear a friendly voice, for once. She refused to think about the disturbance she had caused that had been strong enough for Finn to feel. Ben hadn’t felt it. Wherever he was.

She slept that night, thoroughly exhausted from her breakdown in the moisture farm. Palpatine’s grinning face haunted her dreams. “I live through you, granddaughter,” he whispered. Rey raised the sabre, to give in, to kill him. This time, Ben never appeared. The hope he had brought with him never manifested in her heart. She brought the sabre down. “Good, good, good!” Palpatine crowed.

Rey woke with a start, heart trying to beat its way out of her chest. She threw herself back into repairing the moisture farm, working through the night to avoid both sleep and the temptation to meditate on the darkness inside of her. It was exhausting, but for once, Rey lacked neither food nor water so she managed. When she wasn’t working on the farm, she set Finn’s message playing. She still hadn’t called him back but his voice gave her something to focus on other than her own thoughts.

Luke and Leia stayed away. Rey tried hard not to blame them, tried hard not to think that it was like being abandoned by a second set of parents. The Skywalkers were all dead and it slowly dawned on her that she was once again the only surviving member of a dead family. This time by her own choice. _Not by choice_ , her soul whispered. Her true family had been ripped away from her bare moments after she finally found it.

She resisted for nearly four months before she gave in, diving deeper than ever before into the wound left by Ben Solo. Luke was still wrong, Rey decided as she pushed through, this was too comforting to be the dark side. There was darkness and light here. It looked like deepest space did in those moments when Rey paused the Falcon in the middle of a hyper jump and just stared out at the stars. This was what the bond felt like, she realised. This was the feeling of home and belonging that had enveloped her so briefly from the moment Ben appeared on Exogol to the moment he died in her arms.

“Ben!” she called, her voice echoing into the void.

“Ben!”

There was no reply. Rey pushed on. It could not feel so right and not contain Ben somewhere. Perhaps he was trapped deep in the force and needed her to rescue him. Her whole body pulsed at the thought. Yes! “I’m coming, Ben!”

When she reached the ice wall, she lit the sabre in her hand and smashed through the ice in a shower of red-lit shards. She peered through the hole at the welcoming darkness.

From somewhere far away came the sound of the holocron beeping. _Finn_ , Rey thought.

“I’ll be back, Ben, hold on,” she called through the hole, before resurfacing from her trance. This time, she answered the call before Finn gave up.

“Rey!” Finn called, relief shining in his face. “You’re ok!”

Rey frowned, “Of course I’m ok.”

Finn shook his head, “Of course. You can take care of yourself. But did you feel it?”

“Feel what?” Rey felt strangely detached from everything.

“The force, it… well, I don’t know… didn’t you feel it? You must have done.”

Rey shrugged, “I probably caused it.”

“No!” Finn protested, “No, this was dark. Like, like Palpatine dark.”

“Well, I am his granddaughter.”

Finn frowned and leaned closer, as though scrutinising her image. “Are you- Rey, are you sure you’re ok?”

“Yes.”

Finn didn’t seem convinced. “Maybe you should come back here for a bit.”

“Why?” Briefly, the thought of Finn’s warm hugs flashed through Rey’s mind. Maybe…

“We’re your family.”

Her family was gone, disappeared from the galaxy, from the entire force. “My family is dead.”

“Rey, I really think… you know what? I’m coming to you. Me and Rose and R2 and 3PO. Poe’s a bit busy otherwise he would come too.”

The trip would take a couple of standard days. Plenty of time for Rey to go back and find Ben.

“Ok.”

“O-Ok?” Finn looked shocked, as though he hadn’t expected her to agree.

“Yeah, ok.”

“Right. Well, see you soon, I guess.”

Rey waved, “See you, Finn,” then closed the connection.

It was dusk outside, too late to do anything on the farm. Grabbing her lightsabre from the chest where she had hidden it, Rey settled back down to meditate. She knew exactly where she was going and what she wanted this time and it wasn’t long before she stood before the gash in the ice wall once again.

“Ben?”

Her own voice replied, echoing and overlapping on top of itself. “Stop taking my hand!” “…did want to take your hand…” “Ben, please don’t…” “I’m not leaving without you!” “You’re difficult!” “Is it true?” “…creature in a mask!” “Neither are you.” “…telling me they know me, no one does.”

Then, so faintly, Rey almost thought she might have imagined it, “But I do.”

He had never said that to her. Not aloud. Although she knew, she knew when she said that to Finn that, yes, someone did know her. But he had said it now. She stepped through the ice wall.

That soothing darkness enveloped her even more warmly than before. Ben was here, he had to be. The galaxy of speckled lights was weaker through here, but Rey didn’t need the light to know where to go. “…I do, I do, I do, do, do, do, do, do…” echoed through the darkness just loudly enough for Rey to follow. She continued on. So deep that the faint lights all disappeared. So deep that the sabre gripped in her hand was the only thing left to keep her grounded.

“But I do, I do, I do, do, do, do, do, do, do…” continued. Drawing her in. She dared not call his name again for fear of disturbing Ben’s voice. And still, it was getting fainter, eventually little louder than her heartbeat, then… silence. Rey stopped still and listened. She had never heard such pure and total stillness.

“Ben?” she whispered, but no one answered. Slowly, the heavy silence began to feel burdensome, uncomfortable, dangerous even. The comfortable warmness that she had always thought denoted Ben’s presence leaked away leaving Rey chilled to the bone and on edge. Suddenly, she knew, like she had known on Jakku when someone was about to attack her, that she needed to get out of there. Now.

She reached out blindly with the force, begging for a direction, and ran. The heat leeched out of her body even as she sweated with exertion, but it was the fear that turned her heart to ice. Running in the darkness was a million times worse than running through sand but Rey kept going. Time was running out.

Finally, finally, she reached the ice wall. Just in time to watch it refreeze in front of her.

“No!” she threw herself at it, pounding at the ice with her fists, “No! Let me out!”

The sabre in her hand was gone, the ice was too thick to even register her pounding. “Please,” she begged, “please!” Her forehead fell against the wall with a _thunk_. “Please…”

A silhouette began to form in the ice and, once again, Rey was met with her own face. Only, she was on the wrong side and her reflection was smiling nastily at her. Then the reflection spoke and Rey’s eyes widened in horror.

“Thank you, granddaughter, I could not have done it without you.”

“No. No. No! Let me out!”

Rey Palpatine ignited her double bladed, red lightsabre. “You’ve been submerged in the darkness long enough to have bled the physical one, too,” she commented casually.

Rey’s eyes filled with tears at the thought of her beautiful yellow sabre. “No, no, I killed you.”

Palpatine laughed. “Did you forget? That’s what I wanted you to do. And,” she added gleefully, “getting rid of Solo was a nice touch. He could have been dangerous.”

“Ben,” Rey’s heart broke all over again, “What did you do with Ben?”

Palpatine shrugged, “Solo’s not my problem anymore. Now, I had better be going. I must be prepared to greet my guests.” She turned gracefully away, black robes flowing behind her.

Rey collapsed against the wall, taking perverse pleasure in the chill of the ice. Ben was gone. He had never been here. He had left her alone. Again.

And Finn… Finn was in danger.

Closing her eyes and focusing her whole being on doing this one thing, she reached out to find Finn in the force. It took all her remaining strength, everything she had left to give, but she found him.

“Finn,” she managed to whisper before passing out, “Finn. It’s a trap. Don’t go. I’m so sorry.”


	2. Chapter 2

When Finn felt the first burst of darkness echoing through the force, he wasn’t too worried. He wasn’t accustomed to actually knowing that he was force sensitive, let alone to interpreting the flashes of insight the force would occasionally give him. He called Rey anyway, just to check and see if she had felt it too. She didn’t pick up, but he left her a message which he knew she saw – she’d been so distant lately, even more than before the whole Palpatine thing, so he turned on the function that let him know if she had watched his message. He was just worried. 

She never called back and Finn decided to actually try and learn something about the force while she was gone. There was no one to teach him, but he’d watched Leia train Rey for a year and while he hadn’t understood much of what they had done, he vividly recalled Rey laughingly recounting her first lesson with Luke.

“He told me to reach out. So I did,” she was giggling. Leia’s face held a look of dawning mirth.

“Oh, Rey! You didn’t!”

“I did! I Reached out. With my hand!” The two women burst into laughter to Finn’s confusion.

“Then, he… he…” Rey was laughing so hard she could barely speak, “He got a blade of grass and just… he touched my hand. And I-” Finn had never seen Rey laugh this much. Or Leia for that matter. “-I told him… told him I could feel it! The F- f- force!”

Tears were streaming down Leia’s face. “Oh no!”

“Yes!”

Poe turned up then and watched the near hysterical women. “What’s up with them?”

Finn shrugged, “Dunno. Some Jedi thing.”

Later that evening, Finn had asked Rey for an explanation and she had blushed bright red. “Oh, Finn, I was so stupid! It’s the force, it isn’t physical. You close your eyes and open your mind. It’s your mind that you reach out with. I must have looked so ridiculous trying to _feel_ the force with my hand straight out in front of me. No wonder he slapped me with the grass!”

Finn thought it was a perfectly reasonable mistake to make, but that didn’t matter now. What mattered now was that she had told him something useful. Close your eyes, open your mind. So he did.

It took him a few tries, but a few weeks later he was able to sense the force presences of everyone in the new Galaxian Republic headquarters, and some even further out. With the patience and discipline drummed into him as a storm trooper, he spent nearly an hour every day ‘reaching out’ into the force. Thus, when he felt the second flash of ominous darkness, so much stronger than the previous one, and lingering, he thought perhaps he was simply more sensitive than last time. More aware. He called Rey again anyway.

She answered this time, but something was wrong. Her eyes were hollow, heavy black shadows hanging underneath them, and her weak smile when she said she had probably caused the dark presence made him wary. His sense of the darkness only got stronger the longer he spoke to her. Something was very wrong.

“…you know what? I’m coming to you.” It felt like the right decision as soon as he said it and he was preparing himself for her protests. Instead, she just said, “Ok.”

If anything, her easy acquiescence worried him even more.

He rounded up Rose, R2-D2 and C3PO then went to find Poe.

“We’re going to see Rey. She needs… something.”

Poe didn’t question anything. “Sure, take Chewie, he’s been a bit restless recently.”

Rey had taken the Falcon and although Chewie had been insistent at the time, everyone knew that he had been feeling at little lost without the old ship no matter how many joy rides he and Lando went on.

Within half an hour, the motley crew were on their way to Tatooine. Rose and Chewie sat in the cockpit expertly piloting them through the treacherous atmospheric asteroid field. Finn sat in the back filtering out the two droids’ bickering and began to meditate. The feeling of darkness had only gotten worse since he had spoken to Rey. It felt like something was coming and it lay heavily across the entire galaxy as Finn settled himself into the force. It was different, meditating in space. Both easier and harder. There were so many lifeforms flitting through the galaxy that all suddenly felt closer and it was hard to pinpoint any one in particular.

“No!” A voice shivered through the force. Finn frowned. Was that Rey? “No! Let me out!”

Against all his instincts, Finn stayed buried in the force, listening. His body demanded he do something. Call out to her, help her, break his meditation and urge Chewie into hyperspace as fast as possible. Instead, he sat still, listening. Nothing was as clear as those first few cries, but a few words slipped through, “No… you…Ben… you do…”

There was silence for so long, Finn almost gave up, then, clear as day and echoing with despair, “Finn. It’s a trap. Don’t go. I’m so sorry.”

Finn surfaced with a gasp. “Rey!”

“Master Finn,” C3PO was suddenly in Finn’s face, “is everything alright?”

Finn shook his head, “No. Rey. 3PO…” A glance out the window told them they were already in hyperspace.

C3PO moved out of Finn’s eyeline, saying something about a glass of water. Rose replaced him.

“Finn, what happened? You were pretty deep in the meditation there.”

Finn paused, trying to get his breath back and mindlessly accepted the cup of water 3PO handed him. “It was Rey. I heard her. She was… arguing with someone. Then she, she spoke to me. Said, it’s a trap and not to go.” He met Rose’s worried eyes, “There’s something dark out there, Rose, and Rey’s in danger.”

“We’ll save her,” Rose said, determined. Chewie chimed in with a roar.

Finn wanted to agree, he really did, but, “No. We can’t. Not like this. Whatever it is, it’s strong with the force. We don’t stand a chance.”

Rose’s face didn’t change. “It’s a trap, she said?”

Finn nodded.

“Right, well then. She warned us and now we won’t be surprised. We’ll just sneak in, find out as much as we can, get out of there and then we can make a plan.”

R2D2 beeped.

“Don’t be ridiculous, R2,” C3PO scolded. R2 beeped again. “You did _not_ take down a Tauntaun, that was Master Lu- No, absolutely not. Miss Rose has made an excellent plan and you will not ruin it by storming in on your own!”

“It’s ok, R2,” Rose said, “we’ll save her.” Finn wished he felt as sure as she sounded.

They landed on Tatooine, half a day’s journey from where they had intended to land. Chewie and the droids stayed with the ship, while Finn and Rose hired a speeder and took off to Mos Eisley. To Finn who had lived almost entirely on ships until two years ago, the little town seemed like a run-down dump. Sand blew about everywhere and the only colours seemed to be various shades of brown. Rose pointed out a stall selling some kind of street food that she had heard was delicious. It looked like slop to Finn, and, like everything else in this town, was brown, but he promised Rose they could get some once they had finished their reconnaissance mission.

They headed to a run-down cantina that at least had some colour and ordered a couple of drinks. Finn couldn’t help thinking of the first time he and Rose had been on a mission together. This cantina was to Tatooine what that casino had been to Canto Bight. The patrons were surely all as corrupt too. Finn could see at least three shady looking conversations taking place in the shadowed corners of the room. While Finn was sceptically eyeing the place, Rose began their mission. She was in the middle of a cheerful, gossipy conversation with the alien behind the bar by the time Finn turned his attention back to her.

“Skywalker, she calls herself,” the alien was saying. Rose certainly worked efficiently. “But we all know she ain’t really one of them. They’re all dead fighting for a war that has nothing to do with us.”

Rose nodded sympathetically, “Who is she then?”

The alien shrugged, “Dunno, but she’s crazy enough to be a Skywalker. Near killed Horen’s kid a few months back.”

“Oh no! What happened?” Rose asked in the tone of someone practically begging to hear a juicy story.

“Well,” the alien began, but was interrupted by someone else demanding a drink. He came back quickly, leaning conspiratorially over the bar, “Well, the kid was playing with his mother’s speeder and lost control. Flew straight into her moisture farm and tore the place up. Then, he says, she used magic and pulled him out of the crashed speeder by his neck-”

“Magic?!”

He nodded, “Didn’t lay a finger on him but the poor boy still says he can’t breathe sometimes. Reckons she cursed him. ‘S’why she let him go.”

Finn frowned, leaving all the horrified exclamations and intrigued gossiping to Rose. The boy must have been lying. Rey would never try to kill anybody, especially not a child. Would she? He sat and brooded until Rose dragged him away.

“We need to go and see her,” he said.

Rose nodded, “Yes, but if it _is_ a trap we can’t just walk right up to the front door. It’s not far to walk, apparently, we’re going to have to go across the desert.”

Finn groaned. His trek across the Jakku desert had been enough for one lifetime, but Rey needed him.

Luckily, Rose’s information was correct, and it barely took twenty minutes of walking for the Lars homestead and moisture farm to appear on the horizon. They lay down behind a sand dune and fished out their binoculars. Everything looked quiet. The moisture farm had obviously been repaired since that boy had crashed into it.

“Do you see anything?” Finn hissed.

“Nope.”

There was a beat of silence then Rose added, “What shall we do? What does the force feel like?”

Finn closed his eyes and focused before snapping them open again with a gasp. “Dark. We shouldn’t go.”

Rose’s face looked grim, “Are you sure? Rey-”

But now that Finn had opened himself back up to the force, everything inside of him was screaming at him to get out of there. Now!

“We need to go, Rose!” He scrambled up, pulling her with him. “Run!”

They started running. Behind them, a speeder started to whine. “Faster!” Finn grabbed Rose’s hand pulling her along with him. He must have tapped into the force somehow because they made it nearly half-way back to Mos Eisley before the speeder caught up to them. Finn risked a glance behind him. It was Rey, dressed in black robes with a red double-bladed lightsabre in her hand. She was gaining on them quickly and Finn forced himself to run faster. She was almost within striking distance of them, so close that Finn could see the horrifying yellow glow of her eyes, when a blaster bolt shot past them, striking Rey’s speeder in the engine housing and causing her to tumble into the sand.

“Get on. Quickly.” Their brown-clothed saviour tugged Finn and Rose onto his speeder, barely letting them get seated before taking off again.

“Thanks,” Rose gasped. Finn stared behind them at the rapidly disappearing wreck of Rey’s speeder. What had happened to her?

Their saviour refused to take off his mask, accept payment or tell them his name when he dropped them off back in the town. “I’m leaving this pathetic planet today,” he told them, “and I suggest you do too. Go somewhere where she can’t find you.”

“But she’s our friend,” Rose protested.

“Not anymore,” Finn said sadly, then he turned to the stranger, “how did you know?”

He shrugged, “Heard you talking in the cantina and thought you might try something stupid. Now get out of here. Your friend’s lost.” Rose tried again to thank him, but he waved away her words, flicked on his speeder and took off again.

Chewie didn’t question when they returned to the ship and Finn said, “Get us out of here. As quickly as possible.”

Finn waited until they were safely in hyperspace before meditating again in case Rey could sense him. This time, he closed his eyes and called out for Leia or Luke. He knew they had visited Rey occasionally and usually left her even more closed off and detached than she had been before, but Finn needed help. He couldn’t do this alone.

Both of them answered, appearing together wearing identical frowns. Finn didn’t bother with a greeting, “Do you know what happened?”

The twins exchanged speaking glances, then Leia said, “We can only feel the disturbance in the force. There is… a wall…”

Luke nodded. Finn had only seen Luke Skywalker that one time, from a distance on Crait. Somehow, he had been expecting the young, impulsive hero and not the grumpy old jedi. “Rey is gone. Not dead,” he added, seeing Finn open his mouth to speak, “but gone. It will take a lot of power to get her back.”

“Power that I don’t have,” Finn guessed.

“I’m afraid so.”

“Who does then?” Finn demanded.

Again, the twins exchanged glances, a whole conversation happening silently before Finn’s eyes. Finally, Luke sighed. “You will have to go back to Exogol and bring Ben back.”

“Ben?” Finn questioned. He turned to Leia, “Ben Solo?”

Leia nodded. “Kylo Ren is dead, but Ben… Ben is lost. We cannot feel him in the force.”

Finn, though reluctant to go and track down Kylo Ren, admitted he would do anything to save Rey, “He’s on Exogol?”

Luke smiled, “Probably.” Then he vanished. Leia stayed long enough to say, “May the force be with you, Finn,” then she vanished too. Suddenly, Rey’s rants about cryptic force ghosts made sense. At least they had given them a destination.

“Chewie! Change course for Exogol!”

“What?!” Rose demanded. Chewie moaned.

Finn sighed, “Apparently, we need to find Ben Solo.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I fully intended for this story to just be a dark one-shot but apparently I couldn't leave it there. There will be three more chapters after this. Enjoy!


	3. Chapter 3

Ben was floating. When he opened his eyes he saw Naboo, he saw Rey’s island, Jakku, Starkiller base, Crait, the Finalizer, a beautiful lush green planet that his heart told him was Alderaan. When he closed his eyes he saw the Force. Sometimes it surrounded him in bright star-like flecks that pulsed and flickered at his every move. Sometimes it wore the face of a long-dead force user. He saw Jedi and Sith, grey beings who had balanced the competing calls of light and dark. Sometimes he saw ordinary people, force sensitive but untrained. And always, always, the force whispered to him. And he listened.

He heard secrets of the force that had been lost for generations, maybe never even known. He learnt all that the jedi had known, all that the sith had known, and he learnt all that they had lost too. He heard the chanting of Palpatine’s sith cultists from Exogol and the heavy waves and wind of Rey’s island.

Sometimes, he heard Rey’s voice calling him, but then the force would whisper louder, showing him deeper secrets and Rey’s voice would disappear. Sometimes, he thought of the feel of her lips on his and the sight of her brilliant smile, but then he would open his eyes and he would be exploring the lost cities of ancient civilisations, or in his childhood bedroom staring out at the rose garden he had helped his mother plant.

The force would pulse with light and dark and every shade in between and Ben basked in it. Nothing felt wrong, nothing tore him apart, instead it drew him in and welcomed him. He found peace in the darkest parts of the force and energy in the lightest parts.

Once, he heard Rey scream, “No. No. No! Let me out!” and his soul vibrated with the same feeling before subsiding into wonder as the little star-like force beings showed him how to build up and break down walls inside his own head, blocking off Rey’s cries.

It wasn’t long after that when the force started to change its whispers. Still, secrets flowed. Still, peace and energy fed through him. Still, wondrous worlds opened up before his eyes. Yet, beneath it all, the force began to chant, “It is time.”

“It is time,” when he walked through the palace on Alderaan where his mother had grown up.

“It is time,” louder when he spoke with a force user named Revan.

“It is time,” louder again, when he sat on Luke’s rock on Ach-To.

“It is time,” still louder, as he watched the dancing, glowing force particles.

“It is time,” finally, out loud, said the Prime Jedi.

“For what?” Ben asked. But then, for the first time, the force went silent.

Been floated in the dark listening to the sounds of his own breathing. It was strange, after so long enveloped by the force to be so alone now. Tentatively, he reached out and sighed with relief when he felt the force still there, still powerful and comforting, just at rest.

New presences in the force appeared. Ben had not felt another living soul since he gave his life’s breath to Rey. Curious, he focused on them.

“…place is creepy.” A female voice, gentle, compassionate and still dangerous. It reminded him of his mother.

“Yeah, no kidding.” A male voice. Ben recognised it. Vaguely. Who? This one had the strongest force signature.

“Now what?” the female voice asked.

There was silence, then, Ben was shocked to hear his name called, “Ben? Ben Solo? Or… er…” the voice faltered, “Kylo Ren? Are you… are you there?”

“Yes, I’m here,” Ben replied, “who are you?”

He waited but the visitors must not have heard him. “Nothing?” asked the woman.

“No, nothing.”

“Maybe Chewie should try. They knew each other.”

Chewie? Ben extended his reach. Yes, he found the familiar buzz of Chewbacca’s force presence.

“Yeah, why not? Can’t hurt,” the man replied and now, knowing that Chewie was there, Ben recognised him. FN-2187. Finn. “Hey, R2!” Finn called, “Go get Chewie!”

There was a familiar beeping from the old droid. Ben had yet to meet another with such personality. He had been infused with the force as he was built, Ben recognised now, likely subconsciously by a young Anakin Skywalker.

 _What do you need?_ Chewbacca’s gentle roar, so long since Ben had heard it, felt like home.

“We thought maybe you could try calling for Ben,” the woman replied.

 _I don’t have the force, he won’t hear me_ , Chewie protested.

Ben suspected that neither human understood Shyriiwook, but the tone of Chewbacca’s whine was clear enough.

“Just try, Chewie, please. For Rey.” Finn said.

“Rey? What’s wrong with Rey?” Ben demanded, for the first time truly annoyed that they couldn’t hear him.

_Fine, for Rey._

“Thank you.” Finn sighed.

 _Ben?! Benjamin Organa-Solo! Are you there? Rey’s in trouble and for some reason Finn thinks you’re the answer. I’d rather rip your arms off myself._ There was a pause. _Or maybe just one. You can be half mechanical like all the other stupid Skywalkers._

“That’s not going to encourage him!”

Ben should have known that C3PO would be there, too.

“Why? What did he say?” the woman asked.

“He said he’d rip my arms off,” Ben told her.

“He threatened Master Ben with dismemberment,” C3PO said.

Finn laughed.

 _What? He deserves it._ Chewie growled.

“I do,” Ben admitted, although he no longer felt heavy with the guilt as he had once done.

“Well, yes, he does,” the woman agreed, “but we need his help to save Rey.”

Again, they referenced an apparent threat to Rey. What had happened? Ben focused. Finn was force sensitive, surely he would be able to get through.

“Finn.” Nothing. The force was so thick here, it must be able to work. “Finn!”

“Finn?” the woman’s voice asked, “are you ok?”

“Yeah, yeah, I just thought…”

“Finn!” Ben tried again. “Finn!”

“B-Ben?”

Had he got through? “Finn! Can you hear me?”

“I can sense… something. It might just be this place, the force is so… but maybe… Ben? Are you there?”

“Yes. Yes, I’m here.” Ben felt it get through this time. Finn gasped.

“He’s here, somewhere. Where are you?”

Ben was still floating in the dark. He couldn’t see anything. “I don’t know. Nowhere. Everywhere.”

There was silence for a few seconds.

“What’s wrong?” the woman asked.

“Stupid cryptic force users,” Finn muttered.

Chewie laughed.

“That’s not helpful, Ben,” Finn said.

“It’s the best I’ve got.”

“Right, well, now what?”

Ben thought for a second, remembering all the wonderful things he had been learning. “I should be able to anchor myself to you, but I need… where are you?”

“Exogol.”

Ben shuddered, Rey’s dead staring eyes flashed through his mind. And now she was in danger again. He shook it off. He could worry about his bond mate once he was a physical being again. “Ok, in the throne room?”

A beat of silence, then, “I don’t think he can see you nodding, Finn.”

“Oh, right. Yeah, in the throne room.”

Ben pictured it. The sith throne, the chasm he had fallen down, the spot on the floor where Rey… “I need you to sit on the throne.”

“No! No way!”

“What? What did he say?”

“He wants me to sit on the throne!”

“Oh my!” C3PO exclaimed.

Ben sighed, “I need to be able to picture you exactly. Just do it.”

There was some more mumbled complaining but eventually Finn said, “Ok, I’m sitting on it. Now what?”

“Meditate. Try and find me and I’ll try and latch onto you. I should be able to pull myself back by connecting to your force signature.”

“…that sounds dangerous.”

“Maybe.”

Despite his protests, Ben felt Finn’s force signature expanding, filling the space. Visualising the ex-storm trooper sitting on the sith throne, Ben let himself meet Finn in the force. Finn gasped.

“Focus!” Ben hissed.

Securely locked onto Finn sitting on the throne, Ben began the process of re-materialisation. The Prime Jedi had done it, once, and the force had shown him how but it was difficult. Slowly, though, piece by piece, Ben felt it working. The force helped. It wanted him to do this. Finally, near exhaustion, Ben felt the last element slot into place. Then he was falling and landing in a heap in front of Finn who stared down at him from the sith throne.

“Ow,” Ben moaned.

As though his quiet complaint broke a spell, everyone suddenly started talking.

“What the hell?!” Finn exclaimed.

“Master Ben!” C3PO called, followed by R2’s excited beeping.

“Wow! That was amazing! He just materialised out of thin air! How did you do that?!” the woman asked.

 _Benjamin Organa-Solo!_ Chewie’s roar stopped the outburst as suddenly as it had started.

Ben scrambled to his feet and gave Chewie a nervous grin. “Er- Hi Chewie…?” It came out as more of a question and ended on an embarrassing squeak when Chewbacca began thundering towards him. Ben tensed, preparing for the pain of a wookie punishment. Instead he was swept up into a rib-cracking hug. Ben sighed. If slightly too tight hugs were going to be Chewie’s punishment of choice, he couldn’t say he didn’t deserve the discomfort. _Are you back? For good?_ Chewie whined.

Ben nodded into his oldest friend’s fur, “Yeah. No getting rid of me now.”

 _Good._ Then Chewie released him. Ben stretched his back out gingerly, marvelling at the lack of ancient pain and wondering if maybe Chewie had broken a rib. The woman stepped up to him quickly, grabbing his hand and shaking it. “Hi! I’m Rose! That was amazing! How did you- I mean, the force, obviously, but- Wow! It’s so nice to meet you!”

Ben couldn’t remember the last time someone had been excited to meet him and just stared at her.

She blushed, “Oh, right, sorry.” Letting go of his hand, she stepped away. Ben turned to Finn, who had moved as far away from the sith throne as he could.

“Finn. Thanks.”

“Oh, yeah, no problem,” Finn cleared his throat and continued more confidently, “Yes. You’re welcome. Er, sir,” he finished lamely.

Ben winced, “Just Ben is fine.”

Finn chuckled weakly, “Yeah, habit, you know.”

C3PO and R2D2 apparently couldn’t wait any longer and Ben greeted them quickly before turning back to Rose, Finn and Chewie. “What’s wrong with Rey?”

“Can we get out of here before we answer?” Rose interjected, “This place is so eerie.”

Ben nodded and followed his new companions to their ship. He felt for the force bond – the dyad bond – with Rey but quickly drew back when venomous darkness flooded through from the other end. After having spent so long absorbing and learning from the force, the corruption and decay he felt from Rey made him feel sick. He had to stop, drawing in deep breaths to steady himself.

_Ben? What’s wrong?_

“Nothing Chewie, just… just worried.”

Ben had been bracing himself to see the Falcon and was almost disappointed to climb onto a generic cruiser. “Where’s the Falcon?” he whispered to Chewie.

Finn heard and frowned, “Rey has her. At least, she did.”

Chewie roared mournfully as he prepared them for take-off. “What’s wrong with Rey?” Ben demanded again.

Finn sighed, “I don’t know, exactly. I felt something, so I was going to check on her but then I heard her speak to me. Throught the force. She told me it was a trap.”

“So you went anyway?”

Finn smiled ruefully, “Of course. She was there, in Luke Skywalker’s old home, and she tried to kill us. With her red lightsabre and… yellow eyes.”

Ben stared, stunned. Sith eyes? Rey had yellow sith eyes? “What?”

Finn shook his head. “Luke and Leia reckoned you’d be able to help.”

Ben couldn’t believe it. He refused to believe it. Rey’s light had always shone so brightly. It had blinded him on some occasions, welcomed him on others, but always, always it had been strong and bright. “What happened?”

Rose joined them, leaving Chewie to do the final hyperspace checks. “She was… sad, I think, after Palpatine. She just seemed to withdraw from us more and more. Eventually, she went to live on her own on Tatooine. She called herself Rey Skywalker but only ever… half-heartedly. We all knew there was something wrong but…” she glanced at Finn who looked away. “She never seemed to want _us_.”

It both pained Ben and thrilled him to think that she had mourned for him. “But how…?”

Rose shook her head. “We don’t know. Locals on Tatooine say she’s strange. They said she almost killed a boy for breaking her moisture farm. She definitely would have killed us.”

“You’re our only hope,” Finn added.

Ben appreciated the irony. ‘Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.’ As a child he had demanded R2 to play that little recording of his mother over and over again. He had so wanted to be a hero, to be someone’s only hope. Not like this.

Ben settled into a meditation pose as the ship settled into hyperspace. Masking himself, he once again reached out through the bond. The corrupt darkness overwhelmed him again. He couldn’t imagine, now, how he had spent so long longing for this kind of darkness. Pure darkness was gentle and welcoming and so much, much more powerful. He followed the thread of their bond gingerly through to Rey. Violence and the stench of blood overpowered him. She had killed. Recently and plentifully. Still, he pushed through, past the blood and the anger and the hatred to the part that had always just been Rey. It was empty. He couldn’t sense her anywhere. Then he saw it. Like a parasite, the being of darkness had leeched onto Rey, locking away everything that made Rey herself and replacing it with… No. He was dead.

Ben pushed on, fearful that he would be noticed, but desperate for something to show he was mistaken. The parasite hadn’t – couldn’t – touch the bond, but it had infected near everywhere else and Ben could deny it no longer. He knew that stench too well. It had lived in his head his entire life.

Palpatine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't do any research for this and I'm pretty sure that the force doesn't work like this but it made me happy! Hope you enjoyed!


	4. Chapter 4

Finn refused to believe Ben when he told them that Palpatine had somehow taken over Rey’s body, but Ben looked so sad, devastated even, that Finn was forced to believe him.

“How do you know?” Rose asked.

“Why do you care?” Finn added spitefully.

Ben shot him a wounded look and Finn had to remind himself that this was the dreaded Kylo Ren and he really didn’t deserve Finn’s sympathy.

“We have a bond. Rey and I. We’re a dyad in the force. I can sense her. Or not.”

Things began to make sense all of a sudden. “Is that how you knew where we were all the time?”

Ben shrugged.

“A dyad?” Rose asked, “Like… soul mates?”

Ben (Kylo Ren, scourge of the First Order) blushed.

“Poor Rey,” Finn said.

“ _She_ was the one who kept trying to kill _me_!” Ben protested.

Rose sighed, “So romantic!”

Finn stared at her, gobsmacked, “Romantic?!”

“Not the trying to kill each other bit, the pre-destined romance bit.”

“Romance?!”

Ben watched the two friends bickering over his relationship with Rey and thought longingly of the kiss she’d bestowed on him when they’d won. Maybe, when they got her back she’d kiss him again…

“I mean, look at him. A man in love if I ever saw one,” Rose said, drawing Ben out of his reverie.

Finn stared at Ben, at the hint of a blush on his cheekbones and the secret smile on his lips. “Oh kriff, Rose you’re right.” Finn suddenly yanked the blaster out of its holster on his belt and pointed it at Ben.

“Finn!” Rose protested.

Finn ignored her, “Rey’s like a sister to me. I don’t care who you are, Mr Supreme Leader, jedi-sith master Ren, you hurt her, I kill you.”

Ben blinked, “Fair enough. Can we go back to working out how to save Rey now? Or those threats are going to mean nothing.”

“Fine. So, she’s Palpatine now?”

Ben nodded, “And causing some damage from what I could tell.”

“Perhaps Poe…” Rose started, her nose wrinkling in thought.

“Already on it,” Finn quickly typed in the code to access Poe’s personal communicator.

Poe answered almost immediately, “Hey, kinda busy right now. Got a situation.”

“Is it Rey, by any chance?”

Poe paused, then peered past Finn. Rose waved. Ben scowled.

“Finn? Who is that? It looks like Kylo Ren.”

“No,” Finn replied innocently, “that’s Ben Solo.”

“Finn! What the hell have you done?!”

“We need him! Turns out, Rey’s been possessed by Palpatine’s ghost or something.”

Poe sighed, “At least that explains it. Finn, Mos Eisley is a slaughter house and she’s set herself up as Queen. She has all the Hutt gangs working for her. Anyone who tries to reason with her gets killed or, you know,” he waved his hand in front of his face, “mind tricked.”

Ben stood up and moved closer to the communicator, “We’re heading there now. I think I know how to bring her back and kill Palpatine once and for all, but you need to get as many people out of there as you can. It could get messy.”

Poe eyed Ben sceptically, then turned to Finn, “You sure we can trust him?”

Finn nodded. They had no choice.

“Fine. We’ll evacuate as many of the innocent civilians that are left as we can. When will you get there?”

“About three standard days,” Rose informed him.

Poe nodded grimly. “They’ll be gone by the time you arrive. May the force be with you.”

The comm flickered off and Finn rounded on Ben. “You have a plan?”

“Yes. Rey’s still in there somewhere. I’m going to have to break in and get her out.”

“How are we going to do that without hurting Rey?” Rose asked.

Ben grinned, “I learnt a few things recently that should help.”

Three days later they landed in the desert directly outside Mos Eisley. It was too quiet. Finn could only hope that that meant that Poe had evacuated as many people as he could. Chewie and the droids guarded the ship, preparing for a quick getaway if anything went wrong. Finn and Rose snuck into their assigned positions and waited.

Ben marched up to the gates of Palpatine’s new court, allowing Kylo Ren’s confidence and drive to fall over him. He drew on the darkness and tried to radiate power. Palpatine would learn to fear Ben Solo. He threw the gates open with a flick of his wrist and marched in.

Palpatine had created a new throne room and she sat there, a splotch of black against the sandy browns of Tatooine. Ben drew the power of the dark side around him, trying not to react to the sight of Rey looking so hateful.

He was pleased to see an expression of shock cross her face when he first walked in before she quickly controlled it.

“Ben Solo! I heard you were dead. Rey certainly thought you were.”

“Are you not Rey, then?”

The creature on the throne smiled, “Maybe I am. Why are you here, and so wrapped up in darkness, Ben Solo?”

Ben glanced around the throne room at Palpatine’s minions. Thieves, murderers, bounty hunters, all frozen in fear of this one woman. “I felt your darkness call to mine though the bond. I needed it. I…”

Palpatine began to laugh and Ben realised that he had never heard Rey’s true laugh. “Ah! So, even after he has turned to the light, the child of darkness cannot resist True Power!”

Ben hung his head, “No. Not when it’s… not when it’s yours. Hers.”

“Hm. Confused are you, boy?”

Ben let himself blush, “No. Maybe. Yes.”

“The once Supreme Leader of the Galaxy, now come begging at my door! I made you all that you ever were, and you betrayed me. Now you think you can come crawling back?!”

Ben hated this, hated everything about it. He knelt. “Please. Rey.”

Finn, watching from the shadows felt the way the force swelled to fill Ben’s words and tensed his hand round the blaster hidden beneath his cloak.

Palpatine, absorbed in her victory, didn’t seem to notice and Ben took a risk, “Rey…”

The force practically thrummed with that one and several of Palpatine’s followers shifted uncomfortably.

“Calm yourself, boy!” Palpatine snapped, “I am not Rey. I-”

Ben tensed, hoping Finn and Rose were ready to take on the rest of the room. Hoping that she had heard him.

Deep behind the ice wall, trapped away in her own mind, Rey lifted her head. “Ben?” She dreamt she had heard his voice so many times since he died, since she got trapped here, but this time felt different. This time…

“Rey…”

“Ben!” It was him! She heard him, truly heard him! How was he back?

“You have to fight, Rey.”

“I will. I will, Ben.” She scrabbled around frantically, looking for anything she could use to get out. Nothing. But Rey was a scavenger, she could make anything out of anything and in this place, all she had to scavenge was herself. And the force. She laid her hand flat against the ice, closed her eyes and began to breathe. Just breathe.

Ben watched Palpatine frown and grinned. Rey had heard him and was distracting Palpatine just enough. Ben searched for Palpatine’s force signature and tugged. The creature that should have been Rey collapsed to the floor.

The room erupted into chaos. Half the beings in the room took the opportunity to flee, the other half suddenly found themselves facing down Rose and Finn’s blaster fire. Any that got within touching distance of Ben Solo or Rey Palpatine were thrown back by an invisible force field.

Ben stalked forward and scooped Rey’s body up from the ground. The technique he had used to incapacitate her was designed to temporarily separate a being from the force, but Rey was so full of the force that she wouldn’t survive long without it. Gradually, he released his strangle hold on the force. The minute her unnatural yellow eyes opened, Ben dove into her mind. It was a mess of madness and blood-spatter but for now, Ben didn’t care about any of that. He needed Rey.

“Rey!”

Ben’s voice was close this time, so close she could almost feel it. Rey opened her eyes. The ice where her hand lay had thinned. She could just make out Ben’s silhouette behind it.

“Ben?”

“Rey!” he sounded so joyful. “Rey! I’m going to get you out. Just-” He broke off suddenly, his silhouette moving away from her.

“Ben?”

“I’ll come back for you, sweetheart, I promise. But I need to deal with this worm. Keep doing what you were doing.”

Ben withdrew from Rey’s mind, Palpatine was regaining power and starting to fight back. Ben came back to himself just in time to be flung against his force shield and frozen in place. Palpatine stalked towards him, her arms outheld.

“You thought you could defeat me? I have survived four generations of your ridiculous family and I will survive four generations more.” She paused, laughed. “But not of _your_ family. You are the last, are you not?”

Ben pulled himself free of her grip. “No. I will finish what my grandfather started. He destroyed your body, I will destroy your soul.”

Palpatine rolled her eyes, “Big words from a weak boy.” She pulled her sabre from her belt and Ben spent a second, distracted, admiring Rey’s workmanship before simply cutting the kyber crystal off from the force. The sabre sputtered out.

“Wh—” Palpatine shook the useless hilt, “what did you do?”

Ben shrugged.

“Answer me, boy, what did you do?!”

“I’ve been learning some new tricks.”

With a roar, Palpatine launched herself at Ben. She never made it, he froze her in mid-air. He could feel her struggling ineffectually against his grip, but the force had not kept him hidden away learning its secrets for nothing. Ben grinned and stepped closer.

On the other side of the force field, Finn wandered around the room, poking bodies and confiscating weapons. Rose had moved to guard the door. Finn had just bent down to retrieve a particularly dangerous grenade looking weapon from the hand of a dead bounty hunter when he felt the force shift. Unsure what was happened, he made his way closer only to be held back by Ben’s force shield. Ben and Rey were pushed up close together, staring intently into each other’s eyes.

“What are they doing?” Rose asked, coming to stand beside him.

“No idea, but it’s powerful.”

They watched as Rey began to glow a brilliant white.

“Yes! Rey! You did it!” Ben cried.

Rose raised a hand to shield her eyes from the light. “Do you think we should maybe get out of here?”

Finn thought they probably _should_ , but he desperately wanted to be there for Palpatine’s final moments. “The force field should protect us,” he told her, “hopefully.”

Despite the glow, Rey seemed to be struggling with something. Her body jerked stiffly, like a puppet whose strings were being pulled by a careless child. Ben’s frown intensified and he dug his heels further into the ground. Suddenly, Rey was flung backwards and upwards, glowing so brightly that Finn wondered whether he would ever see again.

With his vision clearing slowly, Finn blinked the spots out of his eyes. To his left, Rose was moaning softly. In the force field, Rey was getting to her feet. She was no longer glowing and her face was grim but Finn was relieved that he recognised that face. It was the face she had made when BB-8 accused him of theft on Jakku. She made that face on countless missions when it looked like all was lost, or when she had failed to complete the training course Leia had set up for her and was determined to do better. “She’s back!”

Ben desperately wanted to embrace Rey, to make sure she was alright but that would have to wait. She was standing up and looking determined and that was good enough for him. He looked at the dark, spitting ball of hatred that he had pulled out of Rey as she pushed from within. That ball represented all his worst nightmares. All the doubts and worries and fears that had plagued him from the moment he was born had come from that thing.

The calming gentleness of Rey’s presence in his mind reached him then, soothing him. He looked up and met her gentle, brown eyes and smiled.

“Together,” she told him, reaching out, helping him bear the burden of Palpatine’s corrupted soul.

“Together,” he nodded. He didn’t need to tell her what to do. They were a dyad in the force, soul mates, one person split in two. She already knew.

Rey pulled on all the pure goodness of the force, directing it in a stream towards Ben that pierced straight through the centre of Palpatine’s soul hovering between them. In return, she felt Ben send her his darkness. It was nothing like the horrible, roiling mass of hatred and violence they were seeking to destroy. Ben’s darkness was warm and comforting. It felt like home. Then she sent him it back. Slowly, the light side and the dark side cycled through the both of them, merging and melding until all Rey could sense was a deep, pure grey. It was the grey of a brilliant silver sword and it pierced straight through Palpatine.

_Just a little longer_ , Ben said in her head. Rey let herself relax into the feeling, pure force running through her veins. All the sadness and loneliness of her life she let dissolve into the force. The hole in her heart that had signified Ben’s absence now felt so full. The anger and the fear that had consumed her slipped away. The sound of Palpatine’s soul shattering barely registered to her mind, nor Ben calling her name. It was only Ben’s hand touching hers that recalled her to the present. She let the flood of power peter out, slowly fading away back into the atmosphere. Ben’s other hand had come to rest on her face and he was staring into her eyes. “Rey,” he whispered.

“Ben,” once again she practically launched herself at him, lips crashing into his. She pulled away abruptly. “You’re not going to die again?”

He shook his head, “Never. I’m never leaving you again.”

“Good.” Gentler this time, Rey kissed him again.

Finn stared, gobsmacked. Why, after everything, was it the sight of Rey and Ben kissing the thing that shocked him most? Rose elbowed him gently in the ribs. “I told you they were in love.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm pretty sure the force doesn't work like this but I needed it to so it does! Enjoy!


	5. Chapter 5

Rey refused to return to the Lars homestead. “I wasn’t happy there,” she told Ben.

He shook his head, “No Skywalker ever was.”

She told him where she had buried the two lightsabres and sent him and Finn off to collect her stuff. She and Rose stayed behind in Palpatine’s temporary throne room and surveyed the mess. There weren’t too many dead bodies. Any who were dead seemed to have been criminals and bounty hunters. Rey doubted anyone would miss them.

“So,” Rose sidled up to Rey as she inspected her broken sabre. “Ben Solo. Dyad. _Soul mates_. There’s a story there and you’ve been holding out on me.”

Rey rolled her eyes. She’d never had friends, certainly not female friends to gossip with and chat about boys they liked. It would take some getting used to, so she just said, “I don’t understand it myself.”

Rose narrowed her eyes. “You’re lucky I’ve got to let Poe know that we’re all done. That was _not_ a good enough answer.”

Rey watched the other woman pull out a comm and update Poe. She didn’t listen to what was being said and was quickly distracted by the familiar whine of the Millennium Falcon. It stopped and Finn came bounding up to her. “Rey! Did you know the Falcon has a whole secret deck with a giant wine stash?! It’s amazing!”

Rey had not known that. Ben followed Finn at a more relaxed pace and flashed her a grin that he could only have inherited from Han. “Smugglers.”

Rose, apparently finished updating Poe, came back, “I called Chewie. He’s got everything ready to get us out of here. Poe has people on stand-by for clear up so we’re good to go.”

Chewie had left the ship and come into the town with the two droids to meet them. He stopped in front of Rey and stared at her. She gave a weak smile. _Rey? Are you ok?_

“Yeah. Yeah Chewie. I’m ok.” Rey was surprised to realise that she meant it. Looking around at Ben, watching Chewie warily but fondly, Finn arguing some inconsequential point with C3PO while Rose and R2D2 randomly and unhelpfully chipped in, she thought of Poe who had taken time out from important Galaxian Republic business to help rescue _her,_ and Rey felt peace. _This_ is what family feels like, she realised. Ben turned to look at her and she had no doubt that he had felt her come to this realisation. She grinned at him and reached out to take his hand. He squeezed hers lightly in return.

“You cannot possibly-” C3PO was saying indignantly, interrupted by Finn who protested that, yes, he absolutely could, and R2 who insisted that Anakin Skywalker once actually _had_.

Rose met Rey’s eye and giggled. Rey turned back to Chewie, “I’m more than ok, Chewie, I’m home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this last one was so short, it just felt right to end it there. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much I did writing it!


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